Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/642

626, Basse-Navarre, has always enjoyed a considerable political autonomy. Quite probably the ethnic segregation is due in part to this cause, as well as to the peculiarities of language. This fact that the Basques are not an ethnic remnant barely holding their own in the fastnesses of the Pyrenees, as is generally affirmed; but that they have politically and ethnically asserted themselves in the open fertile country, reverses their status entirely. It confirms an impression afforded by a study of their language that however it may be in Spain, these people are a positive factor in the population of France.

In reality we have here in the department of Basses-Pyrenees a complex ethnological phenomenon, the Basques constituting the middle one of three distinct strata of population lying on the north slope of the Pyrenees. Our map of cephalic index, on page 620, serves to illustrate this. The plains of Beam are occupied by the extreme western outpost of the broad-headed, round-faced



Alpine type of central Europe. A portrait of one of these is given on this page. Then come the Basques proper, with their broad heads and triangular faces. These lie mainly along the